First Comes the Birth and Then the Joy
By Pastor Jim May
Luke 1:31-35, "And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name JESUS. He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest: and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David: And he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end. Then said Mary unto the angel, How shall this be, seeing I know not a man? And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God."
What a wonderful story is the birth of our Savior. It won’t be long, just a few more months, until the whole church world becomes focused on that great event. God brought forth His only begotten Son, in a lowly manger of a village called Bethlehem. The Father in Heaven smiled down upon human flesh, and through His great mercy gave us Jesus Christ. He chose Mary, a little Jewish peasant girl, someone who was reverent enough to hear His voice and to obey His messenger, and a young lady whose heart was set upon being a servant to God.
I know that some faiths even teach that Mary was conceived by the Holy Ghost and lived a sinless life. They claim that Mary was born of an immaculate conception just like Jesus was. There is no place in the Bible where this is stated and I believe that it is a lie concocted by man and conceived of the devil that is designed to draw worship and trust away from the Lord Jesus Christ. I believe that Mary is a saint, but no more of a saint than any one of you who have put your trust in Jesus for salvation.
I have no doubt that if Mary could come back and say anything to this world, it would not be in the form of some apparition at Medjugorje or some miraculous healing ritual. She would cry out, “don’t worship me; worship Jesus, the Son of God.” When you pray to me I won’t hear, I can’t answer, I can’t intercede for you and you are guilty of making me into an idol.
Now I don’t want to stay on that subject because that’s not the focus of this message this morning.
As I read these scriptures, something in them leaped out at me and I believe that God has revealed something to me that He wants me to pass on to you. I want to draw an analogy from this passage for you.
In a very real sense, Mary represents all of us this morning who are a part of the Bride of Christ. While Mary brought forth a living, breathing human baby, just like every other woman who ever bore a child, we all know that the child that was born of her was much more than just another baby. Jesus was conceived by the power of the Holy Ghost.
I want you to understand that that same Holy Ghost is here this morning; right here in this very church. He is next to you on either side, in front of you, leading you and guiding you; in back of you as your rear guard of protection and also to keep prodding you onward to serve the Lord. He is under you, upholding your walk with the Lord, and He is over you, overshadowing you just as He did Mary so long ago. And, if you have been saved and born again, He is also living within you as a part of your very being.
For how can we be born again except by the Holy Spirit? The very process of being born again means that we receive a new nature, a new heart and a new life. The old things are passed away and we are made a new creature in Christ. Isn’t that what the scripture says?
2 Corinthians 5:17, "Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new."
If you have been baptized in the Holy Ghost, that is the ultimate place of glory for us dwell in. Before the baptism in the Holy Ghost we had to prove that we loved the Lord and trusted in Him. Before the baptism you were born again, for that baptism cannot come until we are born again and washed in the blood of the Lamb. Before baptism we had that same measure of faith that God has given to everyone of his children.
Romans 12:3, "For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith."
But the Baptism in the Holy Ghost brings us deeper into the presence and power of God than we could ever go on our own. I see a lot of people who truly have a love for God; who sincerely worship Him and serve Him; and whose lives are dedicated to the service of Jesus Christ. There is no doubt that they are saved and born again, but something is missing.
Some of the people who attend this very church, I know are born again, but there seems to be no power to overcome in their lives. They live everyday, loving Jesus and doing the best they can, but where is that overcoming, anointing power, and the fire of God that we should all have? We need that fire! We need that anointing! We need the baptism in the Holy Ghost!
I don’t want to just be saved – as great as that is! I don’t want to just get by on by salvation experience – as wonderful as that was! I want to be on fire for God! I want to be used to do mighty things for His kingdom! I want these messages to the church to be anointed with a power to change the hearts and lives of God’s people.
I don’t want to come to church and go through a ritual of worship. If that’s all you want, then great, but we should want more! We should want a mighty outpouring of the Holy Ghost and Fire! We should want a might move of God! We should want miracles of healing, deliverance and salvation! We should want something to be birthed in us through the overshadowing power of the Holy Ghost that would shake our own soul, rattle this community and spark a revival like this community has never seen before!
That brings me to the central point of the message that I saw in the passage we read this morning about the birth of Jesus!
Luke 1:35, "And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God."
What do you see in this scripture that relates directly to your life in Christ? I’ll tell you what I see here!
I see you and I as a part of the Bride of Christ. In a very real, yet very spiritual sense, we, the Church of Jesus Christ, are Jesus’ future wife if you will. We will all go home one day to the Marriage Supper of the Lamb, where the Bride will be united with the Bridegroom in the Holiest of all Holy Matrimony. The covenant of love between Jesus and his church, His Bride, will be eternally sealed in the courts of Heaven.
As the Bride of Christ, each of us has our own place, our own duty and our own calling! What is your calling this morning?
For some of us it’s not hard to see what our calling is. For others it’s not so easy, simply because we have not stepped out in service to God, or to our fellowman, in such a manner that our calling can be revealed. We are still a little self-centered, and maybe not God-centered enough, so that the calling still is there but it’s dormant until we make that step of faith and commit to serving the Lord in some manner. Your calling and your gift will never be revealed in your life until you first commit to serving the Lord in whatever capacity He places before you. Only then can your calling and anointing become more specific, and only then will God begin to open the doors of opportunity for you that you are hoping for.
Both times, in Matthew 25:21 & 23, that the “good and faithful servants” were recognized, these are the words that were said to them, “Well done, good and faithful servant; thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord."
Did you catch what was said? It’s only after we have been faithful in the few, small things, that we will ever experience a greater move of God, or a greater work for Him, and the real joy of serving the Lord may not come until after we have been faithful in doing the greater work because that’s what the perfect will of God is for our lives.
Most of you, if not all of you in this service this morning, have had the Holy Ghost to come to you and overshadow you just as He did Mary when she conceived the Son of God? What has the Holy Ghost conceived in you? What has he begun in you that He will bring forth from you when the fullness of time has come? How long will it take for the thing that He has conceived in you to begin to be revealed? I believe that the main determining factor in allowing your gift, calling or anointing to come forth is the quantity and quality of your commitment to Christ!
For all of us I believe that the same words that the angel said to Mary still hold true for you right now. That which was conceived in you by the power of the Holy Ghost is Jesus Christ, the Son of God. You are to never forget who it is that has bought you, and why He has come to you to live in you. Jesus lives within each of us this morning just as He did inside Mary. The difference is that we will never be without Him on the inside of us, like Mary was from the moment of his birth, but He will ever be in us.
But there is also something about the birth of Jesus from Mary that we must not forget. Just as Jesus came forth from Mary, grew up and became God’s gift to humanity, that ministry, that gift, that calling, that anointing, that Jesus that is within each of us, must come forth and be given to the whole world.
We can’t keep Him inside of us, all to ourselves. He came to us so that we could bring forth something wonderful, give birth to ministry and service to one another, and to a lost and dying world. That thing that was conceived inside of you by the overshadowing power of the Holy Ghost is meant to grow and come forth to be a blessing to everyone you come into contact with. Your life should be a shining beacon of the power and presence of the Holy Ghost! That light that has been entrusted to you should burst forth in such a manner that people can’t help but be enlightened about your Lord!
That’s what Jesus meant when He said that we should let our light shine!
You, too, have an immaculate conception in you right now, if you have been born again! I know that some faiths would consider those words as blasphemy, but they are still the truth!
You have the same power within you that brought forth the Savior from the womb of Mary. Jesus was conceived in your heart just like He was in Mary’s womb. You have the same Jesus within you that she did, only in a far greater sense because now He isn’t coming forth from you as a baby in a manger but as the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, Savior of the World, and the Resurrected Lord of Glory!
Not only do you have Jesus within you by the power of the Holy Ghost, but you are pregnant with a calling upon your life! As Jesus grows in you, and you allow Him to control more of you, and more of your heart and life, so will that calling grow! Just as surely as a baby is born when the time for its birth has come, that calling and anointing within you will come forth too. You can’t stop its coming when the time is right, and you won’t want to.
Every natural mother that I have seen will become more and more miserable as the end of their pregnancy approaches and the time for the birth of that baby gets nearer. They can’t wait until it’s over. They know the time of pain and suffering is coming. They know that it’s not going to be an enjoyable time for a while and not an easy thing to do, yet they will do all that they can to hurry that time to bring forth that baby.
The prophet Jeremiah knew exactly what I am talking about. In Jeremiah 20:9 he said, "Then I said, I will not make mention of him, nor speak any more in his name. But his word was in mine heart as a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I was weary with forbearing, and I could not stay."
Jeremiah had given his message but had come to the place where he just didn’t want to preach judgment or to tell Israel of God’s anger any more. He just wanted to crawl off into a hiding place and forget the call of God upon his life for a while.
But God wouldn’t let Jeremiah stop. He made Jeremiah miserable. Jeremiah’s words are so descriptive of the feelings that a woman has who is about to give birth. Something is in them that has to come out. It can’t stay or it will kill me, or it will die within me! I have to get it out one way or another!
If you allow Jesus to grow within you then He will bring about the growth and the birth of the calling of God in your life. You won’t be able to keep quiet. You won’t be able to sit idly by while the church moves on! You won’t be able to keep it to yourself! It will be like something down deep inside of you that is making you so miserable you can’t stand it! You won’t be able to sleep, to eat or to enjoy vacations or anything else for long because something down on the inside is going to keep reminding you that it’s time to give birth to the call of God in your life! You won’t even enjoy coming to church because you will know that you should be doing more – that calling within you is ready to be revealed in service to the whole Body of Christ! Every time you come, the message is going to hit you right between the eyes until you give birth to that thing that is conceived within you. And the more you refuse to let it come forth, the more miserable you’re going to be and it’s never going to quit making you miserable even though you may not even darken the doors of the church for a long time!
How do I know this will happen? Romans 11:29, "For the gifts and calling of God are without repentance." Once you have been made spiritually pregnant with a gift or calling to serve the Lord, that gift or calling will never go away. You may never bring it forth. You may never allow it to be birthed from your life, but it will always be there.
Just as the most joyous time of a natural pregnancy is after the baby is born, so it is with the call of God in your life. When that gift is born and that call of God in your life is revealed and you begin to walk in that calling, obeying the Lord, that’s when the real joy of serving Jesus comes forth!
Have you come to church and wondered why some people seem so much more at peace, so much more joyful, while you are still stuck in the miserable mode? The answer is that they have begun to give birth to the call of God in their lives and they are allowing the gift that was given to them of the Holy Ghost to be birthed in service to God’s kingdom. The more you serve the Lord, the more you enjoy it! The more you serve Him, the greater that gift becomes and joy is only multiplied that much more!
Have you had a hard time overcoming the devil? Do you struggle with some secret sin, or with an uncommitted attitude? Are you losing that battle or winning it? Are you staying spiritually miserable and you can’t seem to even enjoy life to its fullest? Then maybe it’s time to give birth to the call of God in your life!
Your strength to overcome will be a direct result of the Joy of the Lord! And the Joy of the Lord is a direct result of the surrendering of your will to God’s will, and allowing the birth of God’s call upon your life to come forth!
The angel told Mary, “…that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God."
Here’s what I want to leave with you this morning. The gifts, calling and anointing of God that is immaculately conceived within you by the power of the Holy Ghost is nothing less than the very Son of God. Jesus has come to live within you. You have the Son of God within you right now, but He wants to not be in you, but to shine out through you, and be birthed from you unto others.
How can that happen? You can only bring forth God’s Son into this lost and dying world by allowing Him to use your life in His service!
You won’t bring forth Jesus and give birth like Mary did – you will do it in a far greater measure! Mary brought forth a baby, laid him in a manger and wrapped him swaddling clothes. It was 33 ½ years later before Jesus’ purpose was really fulfilled on the cross at Calvary and the empty tomb where he no longer lies in death.
But you can bring forth a risen Savior! You can give birth to Jesus in the sense that He can be revealed in you to the whole world. You can spread his gospel! You can teach, sing and preach His Word! You can let the church world and the lost world of sinners know who Jesus is! He can come forth from you to bring more souls into the Bride of Christ through salvation!
The Holy Spirit has overshadowed you this morning! He is overshadowing you right now, even as I speak! He is conceiving within you a gift, a calling, a special anointing, a work to do for Him, and a power to go and bring forth the birth of those things and use them to build the Kingdom of God as a faithful servant!
What has God conceived in you? What has God called you to do? Are you bringing forth that which He has conceived in your life and heart, or are you determined to live in misery?
Sadly, many today are choosing to end their pregnancy through the murderous practice of abortion. Unborn babies are slaughtered in worse manners than cattle in medical clinics all around the world. Millions of babies will never know life as we know it. I thank God, that in His mercy, every one of those babies will be in Heaven to stand in judgment against their murderers.
I also see this same attitude in the church towards the gifts and calling of God in the lives of God’s people. So many people try to “abort” those things that the Holy Ghost has conceived within them. They try to ignore the calling, but they can’t. They try to run from God, but there’s nowhere to run. They try to make a show, to appease their conscience for a little while by appearing to answer God’s call, but it doesn’t last for long.
You see, there is no aborting what the Holy Ghost has conceived within you! Remember, the gifts and calling of God are without repentance.
Why not just allow the birth to happen and then enter into the real joy of serving the Lord? That’s the only way you will ever hear the Lord say, “Well done my good and faithful servant.”
What has the Holy Ghost conceived within you? Are you attempting to abort it? Are you miserable because you know something has to happen but you haven’t allowed it?
Surrender your life to Jesus right now and the birthing process begin. It will be painful at first but in the end, the Joy of the Lord will overwhelm you and that Joy will be your strength.
